# VM selector A page to start and stop the VMs of the server, one at a time. **Rust** backend (axum + sqlx + aide) driving **libvirt**, serving a **Vue 3** frontend (TypeScript + vue-query + shadcn-vue), on **PostgreSQL** with **dbmate** migrations. The two VMs (`win11` and `arch-hyprland`) share the same hardware and may never run together: starting one while the other is up asks first, shuts that one down, waits for it to be really off, and only then boots the wanted one. The state is read from libvirt on every request, so a VM shut down from inside the guest shows up as stopped on the page on its own. There is **no authentication**: do not expose this outside the local network as is. ## Development The page is developed on a workstation, not on the server: libvirt's connection uri is the only thing that changes between the two. ```bash # 1. Start the development database cd dev-db && docker compose up -d && cd .. psql -h localhost -U postgres -c 'CREATE DATABASE app_template' dbmate up psql "$(grep DATABASE_URL .env | cut -d= -f2-)" -f db/seed.sql # 2. Configure the app cp config.example.yml config.yml # then set vm.uri, see below # 3. Run the backend (port 3000) cargo run # 4. Run the frontend (port 5000, proxies /api to the backend) cd frontend && npm install && npm run dev ``` Open http://localhost:5000. The api documentation is on http://localhost:3000/api/docs. `config.yml` is gitignored: it is where the secrets go. `config.example.yml` documents every key, keep it up to date. Every value can also come from the environment (`APP__VM__URI=...`), which is how the app is configured in production. ### Talking to the hypervisor `vm.driver` picks the implementation: | driver | `vm.uri` | when | |---|---|---| | `mock` | ignored | develop the page without any hypervisor: nothing is really started, and a shutdown takes 6 s so the handover sequence can be exercised | | `libvirt` | `qemu+ssh://user@192.168.0.104:2452/system` | from a workstation, against the real server | | `libvirt` | `qemu:///system` | in production, inside the container, with the socket of the host bind-mounted | The `qemu+ssh://` transport uses the ssh key of the user running the backend, so a key accepted by the server is all it takes to drive the real VMs from a laptop. The driver shells out to `virsh` rather than linking libvirt's C bindings: no native build dependency, and the uri alone decides local or remote. It needs `virsh` on the `PATH` (`libvirt-clients` on Debian, `libvirt` on Arch). ## Layout ``` ├── src/ backend │ ├── api/ http layer: routes, extractors, OpenAPI │ ├── core/ business logic, independent of axum, sqlx and libvirt │ │ ├── controller/ what the app can do (the one-VM-at-a-time rule lives here) │ │ ├── models/ domain types │ │ └── repositories/ traits describing what the core needs from the outside │ ├── services/ │ │ ├── database/ postgres implementation (sqlx) │ │ └── hypervisor/ libvirt (virsh) and mock implementations │ └── utils/ configuration ├── db/ │ ├── migrations/ dbmate migrations │ ├── schema.sql dump regenerated by dbmate, do not edit by hand │ └── seed.sql the two VMs ├── dev-db/ postgres + adminer for development └── frontend/ └── src/ ├── components/ shared components (ui/ = shadcn-vue) ├── views/ one component per route ├── router/ route table ├── services/ api/ (one file per domain area) + i18n ├── lib/api.d.ts generated from the backend, never edited by hand ├── utils/types.ts shorthands over the generated schemas └── locales/ fr.yml / en.yml ``` ## Backend Requests flow through three layers, each one only knowing the next: ``` api (axum handler) -> core/controller -> core/repositories -> services/ status codes business logic traits sqlx, virsh domain models ``` The point of the repository traits is that the core never depends on sqlx or on libvirt: swapping the real hypervisor for the mock is a one-line config change, and neither the controller nor the handlers know about it. Handlers stay thin — extract the controller, call it, map the error to a status code — and their OpenAPI documentation sits right next to them (`fn *_docs`). ### The `vms` table It only holds what libvirt does not know: how to present a domain in the UI (`display_name`, `icon`, `position`). The live state is never stored. Adding a third VM is one insert, no redeploy — but the one-at-a-time rule then applies to all three. ### Routes | route | answers | |---|---| | `GET /api/vms` | every VM with its live state | | `POST /api/vms/{id}/start` | 204, 409 with the name of the VM still holding the hardware, or 503 if libvirt does not know the domain | | `POST /api/vms/{id}/stop?force=true` | 204; without `force` the guest is asked politely (ACPI) and stays `stopping` until it is really off | ### sqlx and compilation `query!`/`query_as!` check the sql against a **real database at compile time**, so the development database must be up and migrated for `cargo build` to work. `DATABASE_URL` is read from `.env`. To build without a database (CI, docker image), commit the offline data: ```bash cargo install sqlx-cli cargo sqlx prepare # writes .sqlx/, commit it ``` ### Migrations ```bash dbmate n add_something # creates db/migrations/_add_something.sql dbmate up # applies, and regenerates db/schema.sql dbmate rollback # undoes the last migration (write your `migrate:down`!) ``` ## Frontend ```bash npm run dev # dev server on :5000, /api proxied to the backend on :3000 npm run build # type-check + build into dist/ npm run type-check npm run lint npm run format npm run openapi # regenerate src/lib/api.d.ts from the running backend ``` Rules of thumb: - views never call `fetch`: they use a hook from `services/api/`, which returns a vue-query query or mutation. Caching, loading and error states come for free. - the VM list is polled (2 s) rather than cached: the hypervisor changes without us. - texts live in `locales/*.yml` and are used through `$t('key')`, never hardcoded. - add a shadcn-vue component with `npx shadcn-vue@latest add `. ## Production `cargo build --release`, `npm run build`, then point `frontend_dir` at the built `frontend/dist`: the backend serves the static files and falls back on `index.html` so the vue router keeps working on a page reload. Only one process to deploy. In the container, two things are needed on top of the binary: - `virsh` installed, and `/var/run/libvirt/libvirt-sock` bind-mounted from the host - the container user in the host's `libvirt` group (`group_add: [""]` in the compose file) — without it the socket is visible but every call is denied